The Temptation of Savannah O’Neill Read online

  And finally:

  “Tragedy!”

  She followed that link, her heart in her throat, to a three-page article in the Post-Dispatch.

  The grand opening of Matt Woods’s new Elements Building ended in tragedy last night when twenty-eight-year-old Peter Borjat died in the partial building collapse.

  Savannah sat back, feeling as if she’d swallowed rocks.

  Instead of a picture of a happy family including Matt, what she saw was somehow worse. A haunting picture of a wide-open room with gabled ceilings and skylights, soaring steel girders and polished pine floors. Chandeliers glittered and cocktail tables still held half-filled martini glasses, as though the drinkers had just gone to the bathroom. A woman’s red high heel lay next to a gaping, jagged hole in the corner. A curvy steel sculpture jutted out of the black crater like a horrific swizzle stick.

  She clicked onto the second page.

  Officials now say that the floor collapse was caused by poor construction. The remodel of the two-hundred-year-old warehouse was incomplete and insufficient for the planned usage of the space. According to investigators, the floor in question was not properly reinforced.

  “The lives of everyone at that party were in jeopardy,” Inspector Phillip Jefferson states. “It’s a blessing there weren’t more deaths.”

  “The plans for that particular space were changed last minute,” Jack Donnelly said in a written statement. “That, however is no excuse for what I did and I take full responsibility.”

  A picture was coming together in Savannah’s mind and it wasn’t pretty. Poor construction? The death of a twenty-eight-year-old man?

  Her stomach twisted and churned, acid rising in her throat.

  And she thought her demons were bad?

  Matt had blood on his hands.

  However, the next story muddied the picture in her mind.

  Architect Proves No Knowledge of Poor Construction.

  In deposition today, Matt Woods proved he had no knowledge of what his partner and longtime friend Jack Donnelly was doing to cut costs in the construction of the Elements Building.

  Woods, who has been unreachable since the tragedy, appeared grief-stricken and shocked outside the courtroom. Despite the ruling, he defended Donnelly.

  “What happened,” Woods said, “was my fault as much as it was Jack’s. This was a partnership. My condolences and sincere regret go out to Peter’s family and friends. I know there is nothing I can do to repair your loss and I am deeply sorry for my role in this tragedy.”

  Savannah rubbed her hands over her face.

  Hero? she wondered. Or bad guy?

  There was only one way to find out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MATT DIDN’T KNOW WHAT time it was. The sky was bruised, but pink touched the eastern clouds so he figured it was close enough to day to get to work.

  He rose from the chair he’d spent the night in and pulled on the clean clothes that Margot laundered for him at the end of each day. He barely felt the denim and cotton. Or the sting of his blistered palms. He was dimly aware of an ache in his stomach, but food, he’d learned, wasn’t going down so well these days.

  He filled his thermos with water in the bathroom and stepped outside into the hot liquid kiss of a Louisiana summer morning.

  All of it, the burn of his tired and sore muscles, the heat of the day, the buzz of insects, seemed somehow removed, disconnected from him.

  Instead, his ears roared with the screams of metal and the thundering splinter of wood.

  “Matt?”

  Everything went silent at the sound of Savannah’s voice. He turned looking for her in the shadows, wondering if this was another figment of his imagination.

  Another ghost coming to get a piece of him.

  He glanced down and realized he was standing right next to her. Savannah sat on the steps, her bare legs, honey-colored and long as the horizon, curled up to her chest.

  Her eyes, wide and liquid in the dark, looked up at him. Right through him.

  She knows. The thought was like a gong in his empty chest. It made sense, of course—she was a researcher and his crimes were hardly hidden.

  “I brought coffee,” she said, holding out a mug.

  It smelled good, bitter and dark. His body practically screamed for the caffeine.

  “No thanks,” he said, stepping past her toward the courtyard. She brought the coffee because she wanted to talk. And he wanted to start digging trenches for the box hedge maze.

  “Matt,” she said, that Southern accent winding through the courtyard to curl around in and around him, like smoke from some internal fire. “I know about the accident.”

  He didn’t answer, just opened the shed and started taking out his tools. Dawn was approaching and the dark night was turning gray.

  “Did you know?” she asked from a few feet away. “About the floors?”

  Did I know? Strange that everyone thought that knowledge meant guilt. Or that lack of knowledge meant innocence. As if it were that easy.

  “Does it matter?” he asked, kicking a clod of dirt off the sharp edge of his shovel then throwing it on the ground.

  “Of course—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, Savannah.” He gave her a hard look.

  “Well, if you want to keep punishing yourself in my courtyard, you’re going to have to talk.”

  He ducked farther into the shed, grabbing the hand tools.

  “I’m not going to leave this alone,” she said, from the doorway.

  Of course not. Of course she’d make this hard.

  “It’s none of your business.” He growled the words, stomping past her to the cypress.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s not. But Jack—”

  “How about we talk about Katie’s father?” he asked, shifting to offense, his temper lit. “Where is he?” She went pale and he arched his eyebrows, waiting. Feeling relentless, he wanted to hammer on her like the ghosts hammered on him.

  A mourning dove cooed and a dog barked someplace close by and he waited. He waited and he watched her, remembering the way she tasted. Wanting suddenly, ferociously, to taste her again. To lose himself in all the promised heat that still lingered between them.

  Hotter now, this moment, her lips a trembling bow, than ever.

  “Go to hell, Matt,” she snapped. She spun on her heel and left.

  I already am, he thought, and started digging holes.

  NINE HOURS LATER, Matt put the tools away, his work for the day done. The heat had been relentless today. So thick, so heavy it dragged at his limbs, sucked at his head. Katie’s midafternoon water balloon shower had been a fantastic relief. He’d thanked her, which got him the scowling of a lifetime.

  He shut the door to the shed and his vision swam, the earth dipped under his feet. Luckily, the shed was there to hold him up.

  “You’re eating with us tonight.”

  He forced the world to right itself and his vision to clear. When he was sure he wouldn’t fall over, he turned.

  Margot looked regal in pressed linen, a red scarf around her hair. Diamonds sparkled at her ears.

  “Is that an order, Margot?”

  “Damn right it is. I didn’t ask you to stay so you could kill yourself.”

  “For a group of women so angry with me, you’re awfully concerned about my welfare.”

  “And I’m tired of living with martyrs. We’re eating in an hour.” Margot’s eyes raked over him. “Clean yourself up.”

  SAVANNAH COULD NOT LEAVE IT ALONE. Matt and the Elements Building tragedy were like a sore tooth she couldn’t keep her tongue away from.

  Hours passed in a few clicks of her mouse.

  With each story she read, her pendulum regarding Matt swung back and forth between hero and bad guy, lingering more and more on hero.

  He didn’t know about the floors. Research rarely lied and the research proved it.

  During the final push of the construction, he’d been in Mosc
ow, then Nebraska. Peter Borjat, who’d died in the accident, was also the sculptor whose work was being shown in that fatal corner. He was supposed to be showing a piece made of glass and pine at the opening, but it had sold two weeks before the party.

  Instead, they subbed an iron-and-steel piece of his that weighed a ton. The contractor, Jack, wasn’t informed until two nights before the event.

  It was a small detail compared to the thousand bigger ones the men were handling leading up to the gala. It had been dealt with by assistants and subcontractors, and by the time word got to Jack and Matt, it was too late.

  Jack, as he said in his deposition, had crossed his fingers and prayed. Clearly, it hadn’t worked.

  Peter’s family hadn’t pressed charges against Jack and Matt, but the cleanup and recovery costs had bankrupted Jack, who, even before taking on the Elements Building, had been having a tough year.

  In the six months since the tragedy, Matt had opened a fund for Peter Borjat’s family. Given a few more hours, she’d probably be able to find out how much he’d donated.

  Savannah closed her computer. She didn’t want to feel this way about Matt. Sympathy, empathy, whatever this was, she didn’t want it.

  It made her chest hurt.

  Asking her about Katie’s father had been a low blow, but considering the depth and breadth of his guilt—similar in size, she imagined, to her own—she would have done the same thing.

  “Mom!” Katie cried from the bottom of the stairs. “Dinner!”

  Ugh, Savannah thought, twisting her hair up on her head in a sloppy bun. It was almost too hot to eat.

  Rising reluctantly, she pulled on a clean tank top and changed from cutoffs to a light pink skirt. It wasn’t quite dressing for dinner, but at least Margot wouldn’t lecture her.

  She met Katie at the bottom of the stairs.

  “He’s here,” Katie said, with a scowl fit for any bad guy in the movies, which was a pretty good indicator of who he was. “Margot invited him.”

  “Then we will be polite,” Savannah said, rubbing a hand over Katie’s head. Her little girl continued to scowl. “I don’t know why you’re so mad at him.”

  “Because you are,” Katie said. “Or you were.”

  “Let’s try to keep an open mind,” she said, tucking her arm around Katie and heading toward the dining room. Something that felt like excitement tingled along her skin.

  She told herself it wasn’t the prospect of being close to Matt again. It was this mystery that was so thrilling, her O’Neill curiosity curse was all atingle because his grief was fascinating.

  He was just a handsome man.

  And he was truly handsome. As Savannah stepped into the dining room, he looked up from where he sat at Margot’s left and her heart hammered inside her chest.

  His face was deeply tanned from working outside, except for small wrinkles and creases around his eyes that somehow made him more attractive. His hair had lightened from mahogany to oak and against all that tan skin his eyes were the brilliant color of spring grass.

  “Hello, Savannah,” he said, his voice like a rough tongue licking her stomach.

  “Matt,” she said brusquely, which wasn’t what she wanted. So she smiled, briefly, awkwardly, to smooth her rough edges.

  Katie stuck out her tongue.

  “Don’t,” Savannah said in her stern mommy voice, and Katie flounced to her seat at Margot’s right.

  The atmosphere in the room was strange and volatile. Cold winds, warm breezes and a great dark cloud where Matt sat.

  Savannah had no clue how to make any of it better.

  “Now,” Margot said, her smile wide and gracious. “Isn’t this nice.”

  IT WAS HELL.

  Matt could not take his eyes off Savannah. This version of her, slightly messy, almost undone—God, it was such a surprise. Such a turn-on.

  He felt like a fourteen-year-old boy. And, even in his exhausted state, his body was reacting like a fourteen-year-old’s and he wanted to dump the cold Thai noodle salad right into his lap.

  “Are you enjoying the dinner, Matt?” Margot asked.

  “It’s delicious,” he said, and it was, he’d just prefer to eat Savannah. But he lifted a cold shrimp and a bunch of herby green things to his mouth.

  “It’s one of Savannah’s specialties,” Margot said, inclining her head toward Savannah where she sat at the foot of the table. Seriously, Margot was, like, old-world charming. They simply didn’t make them like her anymore.

  “No, it’s not,” Savannah said, laughing slightly. She turned to Matt, her blue eyes hesitantly warm, cautious but friendly. In a glance, he realized that’s exactly how she was—a warm fire, banked.

  Suddenly he wished she’d answered that question about Katie’s father, because every instinct told him he was the man who’d banked her fire.

  Which was a crime, really.

  “I don’t cook,” Savannah said. “She’s trying to match-make.”

  He choked on the shrimp.

  “Don’t worry,” Savannah said, shooting her grandmother a knock-it-off look. “It’s compulsive. Like lying. She can’t help herself.”

  “It’s a gift,” Margot said.

  “A curse,” Savannah interjected.

  “Tell that to John F. Kennedy.”

  “John F. who?” Matt asked.

  “Kennedy,” Margot said.

  “Margot,” Savannah said, taking the reins of the story, “claims to have introduced JFK to Marilyn Monroe.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, laughing despite himself.

  “Hardly,” Margot answered. “I knew Marilyn through Arthur—”

  “Miller?” he asked, astounded.

  “He was a good friend for a number of years,” Margot answered with a glint in her eye.

  “She’s always been a patron of the arts,” Savannah said with a wicked smile.

  “No need to be crude,” Margot chastised. “He was a dear friend and Marilyn was a lovely, if slightly tortured girl.”

  “But how did you know the president?” Matt asked.

  “He was a friend, too. Although that was before he was president.”

  His fork clattered to his plate. He’d known she’d run in high and varied circles, but JFK? He glanced at Savannah, wondering if he wasn’t being put on. Just a little.

  As if she read his mind, she nodded her head. “All true, I’m afraid. She put the Notorious in the O’Neills.”

  “Not all by myself,” Margot said, her look pointed, and Savannah wiped her mouth discreetly and focused on eating.

  The tension in the room returned, prickly and aware.

  Forks hitting plates and Katie quietly slurping noodles were the only noises. Savannah’s warmth was all but gone; a chill blew off her. Blew off all of them. He realized he should leave, so the women could go back to doing what they normally did when he wasn’t here to ruin dinner.

  But the sleeping porch had no appeal right now. None. Hot, dark and lonely. And sitting here was—well, it was fun.

  He had no reason to stay other than he enjoyed it. And it had been a long long time since his only motivation was enjoyment.

  “I designed a house for a certain famous couple,” he said, the words falling out of him and popping the tension. Three pairs of feminine and fascinated eyes swung to him. Even Katie put her hostility away as they cajoled the names of the pair from him.

  “Really?” Savannah asked.

  “Do tell,” Margot insisted. “Is he as handsome in real life?”

  “More so,” Matt answered. “They’re both beautiful. Ridiculously beautiful. I would marry him.” His honesty earned him a round of jokes about him in a white dress.

  He had seconds, then thirds of the salad as he answered their questions about designing for the fabulously wealthy. Savannah brought out dishes of lime sherbet and Matt got Margot to tell him about her brief affair with a certain Bond actor.

  “Let’s just say,” Margot said, eyebrow cocked a
s she stood to clear the dishes, “he took the James Bond thing very seriously. If you know what I mean.”

  “Margot,” Savannah groaned, picking up a stack of bowls and taking them into the kitchen.

  “What does she mean?” Katie asked, her eyes dancing between the adults.

  “Here,” Matt said, standing up to grab the rest of the dishes before Margot got to them. “Let me help.”

  Margot grabbed his hand and turned it over. The blisters and scrapes on his palm looked red and angry in the bright light of the chandelier. “You’re doing enough,” Margot said softly. “I don’t know what demon has possessed—”

  He pulled his hands free and grabbed the plates anyway. “I’m fine,” he said. “Let me make my mother proud and clear the table.”

  Margot lifted her hands in surrender and sat.

  “Well, then,” she said, “perhaps we can go back to our game? Katie and I have grown bored playing with just the two of us.”

  “Sure,” he said, happy at the thought.

  “No.” Katie stood. “I won’t play with him.” She ran from the room.

  “Katie!” Margot called after her.

  “No,” he said, something dark and heavy sitting on his chest. Regret? Grief? Probably both. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve still got a lot of work to do. It’s probably best.”

  Matt grabbed the empty salad bowl and took it into the kitchen. There was no dishwasher, and Savannah was filling the sink with bubbles.

  “I’ll wash, you dry?” she asked.

  He met her gaze; so blue and careful. Cautious, as if she expected rejection.

  Suddenly the kitchen was too small and he wanted badly to escape to the courtyard. To be alone. The temptation of her was nearly too much, but in the end he merely nodded and stepped aside so she could stand at the sink.

  Because he was a glutton for punishment, and because a few hours in the company of these women made him feel lighter. Cleaner. The ghosts and their dirty hands were leaving him alone.

  They worked silently, each of them careful not to touch one another in handing off dishes. Not that it particularly mattered. Touching or not, he wanted her so bad he could taste it. Like lime sherbet on his tongue.